1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a robot apparatus that imitates the actions of, for example, man, learns the behavior pattern of man and performs the actions in accordance with the behavior pattern. The invention relates also to a method of controlling the behavior of the robot apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Robot apparatuses hitherto developed can imitate the actions of a subject, by virtue of recognition technology that uses data input from sensors. Imitation, or a monkey-see, monkey-do action, is regarded as the basis of learning a behavior pattern and the basis of achieving communication. In view of this, researches have been conducted to give robot apparatuses an ability of imitating the actions of a subject (e.g., man) in order to achieve smooth communication and interaction between the robot apparatus and the actions of a subject. (See Christopher Lee, Yangsheng Xu, Online, Interactive Learning of Gestures for Human/Robot Interfaces, 1996 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 4, pp. 2982-2987; Gordon Cheng, Akihiko Nagakubo and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Continuous Humanoid Interaction: An Integrated Perspective Gaining Adaptivity, Redundancy, Flexibility—In One Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Vol. 37, No. 2-3, pp. 161-183, November 2001; and Tetsuhari Inamura, Iwaki Toshima, Yoshihiko Nakamura, Acquisition of Humanoid Behavior and Creation of Primitive Symbols, Based on Mimesis, 16th Annual Conference of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, 2002, Proc. No. 1D1-02.)
These techniques enable robot apparatuses to store action patterns if they act, imitating the subject. If the action patterns are stored, each with an action ID assigned to it, they can be readily read, and the robots can perform the actions.